Monday, 7 November 2016

In immigration debates the false equivalence presumes that because an earlier immigrant cohort
successfully integrated into Canadian society future ones will as well. It’s assuming that because Irish Catholics
who came to Canada in the early twentieth century and integrated reasonably
well then so will Middle Eastern Muslims who come to Canada in the early twenty
first.

But past success of one group of
immigrants is no indication of repeated success for future ones especially for
ones that are a completely different group of people altogether. Despite the negative reception Irish Catholic
immigrants may have experienced when settling in early twentieth century North
America they still held much in common with the receiving culture providing a
pathway for acceptance by the host society and greater ease of integration whereas
Arab Muslim have even less in common with the host society if any at all.

And given the current state of technology one
could effectively live in another country while maintaining strong ties with
the native one. The Chinese have been in
North America for well over a century yet the Chinatowns across the continent
haven’t disappeared. They’ve grown in
number. Toronto alone has at least three
now, four, maybe more if you include the GTA yet you’d be hard pressed to find
an Irishtown anywhere in the city. And
given how we’ve abandoned any sense of a common identity in favour of a vague, multicultural
one integration is now subjective and in the eye of the beholder.